Wolf stalks and kills beaver in exceptionally rare footage
This fascinating video shows a wolf stalking and then killing a beaver in April—an exceptionally rare thing to catch on camera. For perspective, wolves actively hunting and then killing beavers has only been captured on camera a handful times ever.
Now, this isn’t because this behavior is rare—wolves kill beavers in many ecosystems frequently. Rather, the rarity is due to the challenges of observing this behavior in the densely-vegetated/forested areas where beavers live. Observing these events requires being in the right spot at precisely the right time…and that is a very tall order and almost never happens.
But sometimes you get lucky. In this observation, we see the breeding female of the Wiyapka Lake Pack, who is clearly pregnant show up to this beaver dam at 12:18 am. She stand there for 20 seconds before moving forward onto the dam.
She then stands on the dam intently staring down into a small secondary beaver pond below the main dam. After a few moments, she crouches down, preparing to launch an ambush.
This is the most fascinating part of the sequence because it demonstrates wolves use a sit-and-stalk hunting strategy to kill beavers, which is a very different strategy then they use to kill hoofed-prey like deer and moose.
While this might not seem like a huge revelation, virtually no one has been able to witness or watch this behavior. So to be able to see it play out is really fascinating.
Two minutes later, she launches her attack and we see her flying down the beaver dam and then hear splashing in the water. We presume this is when she attacked the beaver in the small secondary pond. Unfortunately, we cannot see all the details because it is out of view.
At 12:22 a.m., two minutes after she launches the ambush, her mate comes traveling down the dam and joins her. We then see the two wolves below the dam, and the female trots back over to the either dead or mortally-injured beaver on the water’s edge and bites it while dragging it on land.
Six minutes later, at 12:28 a.m. the female climbs back up the dam with the whole beaver in her mouth and walks right past the camera. A beaver is swimming in the main pond slapping its tail. The male leaves the area about 4 minutes later. And that was the end of the observation.
Suffice it to say, we were pretty jazzed to capture this on camera.
BUT, we got lucky twice this spring and have another super cool observation—similar to this one— we will be sharing soon!
Huge thanks to the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as well as the 8,700 private donors for supporting our project, which allows us to capture, document, and share fascinating observations like this.
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